


I Against Me

by ChildOfHecate666



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Apollo (Percy Jackson) Needs a Hug, Gen, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Inspired by Music, Mental/Emotional Breakdown, Self-Loathing, Set sometime Post-Burning Maze but Pre-Tyrant's Tomb, The Burning Maze (Trials of Apollo) Spoilers, poor Apollo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:09:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28493646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChildOfHecate666/pseuds/ChildOfHecate666
Summary: Apollo is finally seeing clearly, finally seeing that perhaps his worst enemy is himself. And the realisation hits when his guilt, his pain finally becomes too much for him to deny any longer. He's been waging a war on himself for far too long.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 65





	I Against Me

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by "I Against Me" by Anna Blue. I do not own Trials of Apollo or anything in the Riordanverse, all rights go to Rick Riordan and associated companies. I also do not own the song, that belongs to Anna Blue.

I stand in the gas station bathroom alone, the only noise being the occasional drip of a leaky faucet. My companion was in the gas station, probably stealing from the candy section, leaving me to gas up the crappy car we were travelling in. I had ducked into the bathroom, growing tired after the hours upon hours of driving.

Despite how disgusting the bathroom was, with mould growing in the corners, the tiles cracked and everything looking and smelling as though it had not been cleaned for several millennia, I turned on the rusty tap and splashed the cool water onto my face.

I wash away the sweat and grime that clung to my skin after so many days, weeks of travelling. Honestly, I shouldn’t really be talking smack about how filthy the bathroom was when I myself look as though I’ve been dragged through several hedges and dumped in a ditch for the birds. My clothes are spotted with dirt and dried blood, scars and small cuts litter my skin alongside violently purple bruises and my curly hair is messy and tangled, desperately needing a good wash.

I couldn’t tell whether it was funny or depressing to think I had gone from practically perfect to this. It brought a bitter smile to my lips.

I dry my face on the rough paper towels besides the sink but I don’t move away from the dirty and chipped mirror above the cracked sink. I look at myself for the first time in… I can’t even remember anymore.

I had hated this form when I first got thrown from Olympus. In some way, I still do, but now I just didn’t know. Throughout this whole quest, this entire painstaking ordeal, at every twist and turn, I had learned once again how wrong I had been. How wrong we had all been for all these years. It was in this form I had learned, this form that I had grown used to, even began to call home somewhere in the back of my mind.

This whole punishment had changed how I looked back on myself, on all the things I had done in my long life. How, even after I had fell, I had treated everyone as though they were beneath me, like tools, like playthings that had no real significance to me.

I can feel disgust and shame form in my gut as I think about it. I had been so selfish, so self-centred, just as I had been for so many years. It was thanks to this punishment, all this loss and pain that I have finally seen that.

Now, the thought of who I used to be no longer warms my heart or gives me hope or even makes me sad. It makes me feel sick.

Even now, as I think of it, I want to vomit in this filthy little bathroom. I had hurt and killed, I had ignored and waved off people’s pleas, I had been cruel and pig-headed for eons and in my moronic mind, I thought that was good. That I was a good person. Truth is, I wasn’t a good person at all. None of them are.

I’m still not. I’m still egotistical, still self-centred and ignorant.

I tug down the collar of my bloodied shirt to see the jagged scar that resided right next to my heart. I run a cold, calloused finger over the rough tissue, watching the self-inflicted wound in the mirror.

Even when I plunged that arrow into my chest trying to save them, I had been a bad person. I knew I was going to be saved, otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. This scar was proof of my selfishness, proof I was still a god somewhere deep down in this meat sack of a body.

Even if I had done this, even if I nearly gave my life, I had failed _him._

I brought him on that quest. I had gotten him killed. I might not have taken that spear to his back but I might as well have. I know everyone blames me. Even if they didn’t say, even if they tell me it isn’t, I know they do blame me deep down. Even I blame me, after all.

He had meant so much to people and now they were grieving him, grieving a death that shouldn’t have happened. A death I could have prevented. Meg, my young companion, says I’m a hero, told me so after it all went down. But that is the last thing I could ever be. I couldn’t even save Jason. What kind of hero was that?

I have failed so many times and for my entire life, I have blamed other for my countless mistakes. Now, I see clearly.

I have failed as a father. As a brother. As a son and a friend. No wonder my sister keeps distancing herself from me; I’ve become a burden to her, weighing her down my failures and narcissism. I am a burden to my children, my sweet, wonderful children who helped me even though I have missed their whole lives. I was a burden to all the ones I had so desperately fallen for, only for them to wind up dead because of me.

Just like I had failed to save Hyacinthus, save Daphne, save Asclepios, I had failed to save Jason, my own brother. I have failed everyone I care for in some way or another.

Jason had a sister, friends, family who loved and cherished him and now thanks to me, he was dead. He had his whole life ahead of him and I cut that short. Another failure to add to the list.

It was all my fault.

_“He didn’t have to accept the quest. It’s his own fault.”_ I can hear my old self whisper somewhere in the back of my mind. I glare at my reflection in the mirror as, in my mind, it warped and shifted into the form I had once adored; golden hair, perfect skin and tan, god-like and prideful.

Looking at my reflection now, at the god I had been, it brings back that horrible feeling in my chest, that feeling of pressure and stirring disgust. Something like resentment, that wanted to break loose as it curled around my mind like Python himself, coiling and twisting.

My old self, my reflection looks at me with such a careless, smug expression that it made my blood boil.

“It was my fault. I brought him along. I got him killed. _We_ got him killed.” I sneer, unable to even look myself in the eyes.

_“All we got was a hideous scar!”_ my old self in the mirror seemed to say.

My hands grip the edges of the sink in anger. I could feel my eyes sting with unshed tears. I grit my teeth as I try to shut out the voice, the voice that echoed deafeningly in the back of my head.

_“Why do we have to be on this stupid quest, anyway_? _It isn’t my job.”_ The mirror said almost snobbishly. I chewed on the inside of my cheek so hard that I could taste the coppery blood on my tongue.

“Because-!” I cut myself off, some part of me still in denial, still not wanting to take responsibility.

_“That’s what I thought.”_ My reflection taunted smugly. My clenched fists trembled as I stammered, trying to find words to counteract him.

I look at the me in the mirror with nothing but disgust. Disgust that I had been like this, that in so many ways, I still was like this. That I was so selfish, so pathetic, so horrible. Was this how people saw me? How my sister saw me? How my children saw me?

I pushed past the lump in my throat that had silenced me. My brain yelled at me to prove him – myself – wrong.

“Because it’s our responsibility. We screwed up; we need to fix it!” I hiss.

As I say it, I faintly wonder if my family are watching from their thrones in the havens, laughing at my misery, at my embarrassment and pain. Laughing at me as I argue with my own reflection in the mirror of this crummy bathroom, scoffing at the idea that of me taking any responsibility.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they were. They had never seen me as much more than a womanizer and an airhead with too much ego.

I still felt bitter towards my so-called “family”. The family, that when father decided to use me as a scapegoat, to punish me for one little mistake that any of us could have made, had stayed silent. They abandoned me to save their own skins, to avoid having father’s anger turned on them. None of them spoke a single word in my defence. Not even my own sister, my twin.

But now, looking at who I was before, no wonder they didn’t help. It still hurt, more than any of father’s other punishments could but I understood.

It was like my eyes had finally opened, like for once, I was finally seeing clearly.

_“Oh please. Even so, we’ve always just sent demigods. I mean, it’s me! They should be honoured!”_ my reflection’s voice proclaimed.

Something broke in me. Maybe it was something that had been broken for a long time, but I could no longer take it. I could no longer stand to listen to my own voice.

“Shut up!” I scream, not caring how crazy I must seem, screaming at my own reflection.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” I slam my fist into the porcelain sink with fury. I glare at the mirror with….

With hatred.

The realisation hits me like a bus.

I hate my reflection. I hate every word that he – that I – speak. I hate who I used to be. I hate who I am even now; I hate me.

And it is with that unadulterated hatred that had been brewing for who knows how long, that I start to scream.

“I hate you!” I yell at my reflection and his smug face. “I hate you! I hate you!”

I raise my trembling fist, vision blurred with tears. For someone so narcissistic, I didn’t like myself at all.

For once, I realise that it has always been my fault. It was my fault that Artemis hates me. My fault my kids grew up without a father. My fault for all the deaths, the tragedies I caused myself and countless others. My fault for each and every death that occurred on this quest.

I look at myself and I can’t contain the hatred, the pain that had built up inside me, finally boiling over after so much time.

“I hate you; I hate you, I hate you, I hate you I hateyouIhateyouIhateyouIhate youIhateyouIHATEYOUIHATEYOUIHATEYOUIHATEYOUIHATEYOUIHATEYOUIHATEYOU IHATEYOUIHATEYOU! **_I HATE YOU!_** ” I scream at the top of my lungs, as though possessed, tears streaming down my face like rivers.

I plunge my fist into the glass of the mirror, sending shards everywhere, the broken pieces reminding myself of my own broken soul.

Pain erupts across my hand, blood pouring down from my knuckles and into the sink. It was red, beautiful crimson red, not shimmering gold and for once, I’m happy it is. It means that I can hurt, that I can suffer, just like I made others suffer. The only difference is that I deserve it so much more than they ever did.

I watch the blood wash down the sink, staining the glass shards it sat amongst. My knees buckle beneath me. I topple to the disgusting floor, turning and leaning against the wall. I feel drained, lifeless, like a broken doll on a creaky shelf. I felt unwanted unloved by even myself.

“I hate you.” I whisper, my throat raw.

The glass shards on the floor cut my hands and even cut up my legs. I didn’t care. Instead, I took the pain. I deserved it and so much more.

I sit there, pulling my knees to my chest and weep. I weep for my sister, for Jason, for my children, for Meg but I don’t weep for myself.

I sit there for ages, shaking with tears and pain. I lay there, worthless and less than nothing. I sit and wonder, looking at the glass shards and daring to think, to imagine dragging their sharp edges across my throat, across my wrists.

At that thought, I slam my head backwards, against the concrete wall behind me, again and again as the image repeated itself in my brain, over and over. I pull on my hair, my breathing shallow and out of rhythm. It scared me, almost, to think such things, to think them knowing that I _can_ die. But, if I am honest, the only thing stopping me from going through with it, was one thought in my mind.

_You don’t deserve that relief._ I remind myself. I had to complete this quest, even if the only thing I wanted was to finally put an end to this torture I had called life for so long. _If you were going to die, you should have died before you got Jason killed._

Despite the sizzling hatred I feel burning beneath my skin as I see myself in the broken shards, and the blood pouring from my cut fist and the ache of my skull, I stand. I stand and I exit the bathroom, the site of my breakdown.

Meg is in the car, eating some M&Ms she had stolen. She eyes my haggard appearance and bloody fist.

“You okay, Apollo?” she asks, concerned.

“I’m fine.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the song "I Against Me" by Anna Blue (you should definetly check her out on YouTube; her songs are amazing). I was listening to it and I just felt it could really relate to how Apollo feels about himself in the books.  
> His world is pretty much shattered and he has to take responsibility for things he has done and who he had been for so long.  
> I may have made it more angsty than the actual series is but I hope I did okay. This is my first work on ao3 and I really wanted it to be about Trials of Apollo because there is barely anything to actually do with Apollo himself in the Trials of Apollo tag which is sad because he is the literal main character and is honestly some of Rick Riordan's best character development EVER!  
> I love Apollo's story and I honestly think that those trials will scar him in a way his past times as a mortal never have. The pain he feels helps him see the pain he has caused so many others and I can only assume that all those feelings of self-loathing he had denied having for so long will come bubbling to the surface. He feels like he is his own worst enemy, worse than Python or the Emperors.  
> I really hope you liked it! Sorry for any spelling mistakes. Leave a comment and kudos if you want!


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